


a passing moment gone

by lost_decade



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Angst, M/M, Rough Sex, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-08-07 14:44:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16410440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_decade/pseuds/lost_decade
Summary: Lewis sells his apartment.





	a passing moment gone

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written brocedes in a really long time but somehow today this angsty weirdness happened.
> 
> Title from Simpatico by Navvi.

Lewis signs the document with a flourish, his hand only shaking a little bit, enough that he can file it away as a consequence of jetlag and not examine it for what it really is. It’s only a collection of rooms anyway, somewhere to sleep on the rare occasions he’s in town. Which isn’t that often anymore and despite the views, the white-tipped waves and the sails of the yachts that light up Port Hercule every evening, it isn’t anything more than a rich playground where he had to get his elbows out and dig in with his heels to be accepted in. It isn’t anything more than a place to keep his stuff, an address on his bank account to keep the taxman at bay. 

He lifts a hand to slide a finger down the bare cream expanse of the wall, thinking. Switzerland is nice. He remembers it being nice even though the remembrance is wrapped up in an ethereal sense of him having been a different person back then, a puppet for Ron to wheel out, to shape and meld into who everyone wanted him to be. He was still fucking women back then, rather than just pretending to. 

He was doing a lot of things differently back then. 

-

There’s a mark on the wall in the bedroom, on the corner, a tiny indent roughly six feet off the ground that he’s never bothered to have fixed, the paint chipped off from the plaster. The rage is something he can still recall even now, the way it built up inside him until he feared there was nothing of himself left anymore, bewildered by just how badly he’d wanted to  _ inflict, _ wanted to tear the flesh from Nico’s bones and make him yield, make him settle for second, just fucking take it,  _ please _ . One of them had to, and it wasn't going to be Lewis. 

His phone had thudded against that corner of wall rather than its intended destination of Nico’s perfectly smug, beautiful face, and the lamp had followed suit, the ipad, anything that wasn’t anchored to the floor, until he’d exhausted himself. Until he’d realised that it didn’t matter, that nothing would get a reaction, except maybe silence. 

He isn’t ashamed to remember that he’d cried afterwards. 

“You should sort out your anger,” Nico had said, kissing him with a tenderness more vicious than the aching, limping death of his front wing earlier that day, emailing him with a link to some self-help books later on just to fuck with his head. He'd read them all in a haze of insomnia but there wasn't a chapter on what to do if the love of your life is someone you need to be better than. And Lewis didn’t know how to translate  _ I need you but I need to not need you at all  _ into any kind of language that Nico would understand. 

Once, they’d gone too far, far enough that Lewis felt ashamed of both of them afterwards, Nico refusing to look at him and whispering “you should’ve told me to stop,” with a tremor in his voice which – by that point in the season – was becoming far too frequent. Lewis had turned onto his stomach, pressing his face into the pillow and shivering with the chill of the air-con on his sweat-soaked skin, wondered if it was as bad as he felt like it was, the touch of Nico’s fingertips on the damaged skin of his back confirming the fact. 

He’d raised his head to see the smear of red coating Nico’s fingers, the shame and heat in his eyes, before glancing down to see Nico’s cock still hard and leaking. Lewis had licked his lips, opening his mouth in invitation and spreading his thighs. He thinks there’d been a plug pressed inside himself but he can’t quite remember now. 

“Nico. You didn’t want to stop, did you?” 

“No.”

-

Lewis remembers this building specifically from when they were kids; monolithic on the Monaco skyline. He’d picked it out one afternoon before everything, relaxing at the side of Nico’s dad’s pool – summer holidays maybe, just before Ibiza –  lying curled on the sunlounger with his head on Nico’s thigh, the younger boy smelling of suncream, face still unlined by regret. Lewis had pointed up at the horizon, announced confidently _one day we’ll live there._ Nico held him tighter, the sincerity of youth in his voice as he’d answered _wherever you are is home._

Now Lewis looks at the tower and imagines watching it burn, unsure of whether he’d like to be in it at the time.

-

Home has nothing to do with where your heart is. 

Lewis learned this the first time he slept with Adrian, aged twenty-one and high on the elation of having signed another piece of paper. There was a sweetness to Adrian. Adrian would have accepted being second. He’d have towed the line and said the right things, he’d have done anything. It was nice, after the slow drift apart from Nico in the latter part of their teens, wholesome in a way that even maybe Ron could’ve got on board with. 

There were no sharp edges until Lewis forced some into existence and by that point they realised that Adrian might have Lewis’ heart but that Lewis would never have anyone’s back except his own. 

It was easy to walk away, to find himself where he belonged again – in blond hair and blue eyes, laughter like sunshine. They were some good years, before Mercedes. 

-

2013 and _ my teammate _ rolled off his tongue in every interview, at every opportunity, as if it wouldn’t be true if he stopped saying it. 

_ We did it, we made it Nico,  _ he’d whispered into the German’s neck, mapping every inch of skin with his tongue.  _ Just like we always dreamed _ . 

-

It’s raining in Monaco when the agent comes to take the keys, Lewis standing awkwardly in the empty lounge, thinking about the apartment a floor below. 

_ Hey man _ , he’s rehearsed. 

There are no marks on his skin anymore other than those he’s commissioned himself, the angel wings fully intact.

_ Just to let you know I’m moving out _ . 

Moved out, now. That conversation was supposed to happen before now. When it comes to it, he can’t quite bring himself to knock, shrinking into the hoodie he designed himself, sliding a note under Nico’s door. 

He has five titles now, but it’s the one in the middle of them – the one he doesn’t have – that he thinks about the most. 

-

Switzerland is familiar but new, and as someone special taught him, you’re never too old to start over.  

 


End file.
